Dying Embers Novels & Stories

She takes a deep breath, “I heard a loud, resonant crack, followed by a big splash. The three eldest are in the water. They come up and make it to the shore, but they are soaked through, and we younger ones have no idea what to do. Netty and Emmy try to rub them warm, but they’re so cold. They got tired, and I didn’t know that you have to stay awake, so we let them rest. We stayed with them, but one by one they slipped away until we were sitting there with three corpses.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – “The Kiss That Burns” The Emberfall garden lay hushed in the night, its roses glowing faintly with emberlight. Moonlight spilled in fractured streams across the stone paths, but even the pale glow of the sky seemed dull compared to the restless shimmer of the fire-roses. Their petals pulsed faintly, ember veins flickering as if they, too, were listening for something.

Through my treatments and hospital stays and the times I pushed you away because I was scared of exactly this moment, of leaving you behind. The hardest part of dying isn't the dying itself. It's the leaving. Leaving May, who sacrificed everything for me. Leaving Midnight, who somehow always knew when my lungs were bad and would purr against my chest like he was helping me breathe. And leaving you, my beautiful, brilliant, stubborn Shade, who never saw yourself the way I saw you. So let me tell you what I see: I see a boy who taught himself engineering from library books because his father never bothered to show him how things work.

There was messages from people I hadn’t spoken to in weeks, and a few I hadn’t expected to ever hear from again. Each alert brought another headline. Each more brutal than the last: BREAKING: EMERY – THE DESTRUCTION OF TWO BROTHERS, KILLIAN AND TOBIAS. EMERY: THE SEDUCTRESS CAUGHT BETWEEN RIVALS. IS EMERY A GOLD DIGGER? SOCIALITE CAUGHT IN LOVE TRIANGLE. THE WOMAN BEHIND THE BROKEN BROTHERHOOD – EMERY’S ROLE IN KILLIAN & TOBIAS’S FALLING OUT.

Her tears fell soundlessly into the water. Finally, Ember couldn’t take it anymore. Her vision went black as she lost consciousness, sinking slowly to the bottom of the crimson-stained fountain.

Very gently. I rested my head on his knee. My breathing grew shallower. Slower. Moonlight fell on one person and one wolf, beside a half-built stone wall. I closed my eyes. No howl. No struggle. Just quiet. The moment my breathing stopped, every scar on my body flared with light—thousands of fights, burning all at once. Then they went dark. Everything went dark. Ember died on a moonlit night, in wolf form. Alaric buried her beside the stone wall—the place where they'd stacked stones together, sat in the sun together, been silent together.

Frost began to gather on the edges of my sleeves, and the world turned quieter with every mile. By the second night, most of the soldiers were too tired to speak. Fires burned low, and I sat near one with Seraphine, warming my hands while she stirred a pot of herbs. Her eyes, ancient and tired, watched the flames like she could see stories inside them. “The Ember Plains,” she muttered. “You truly think that place will save us?” “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s the only place left that hasn’t already burned.” She shook her head. “That’s because even fire fears what sleeps there.”

I snapped, pushing past her to open the window wider. “Asphyxia. That's the medical term that covers the entire…concept of suffocation. Just so you know, you know. But it's not like I was trying to kill you, or me. We're too young, and I'm incapable of murder, you know that. I've only ever killed geckos since I was born…” She rambled, trailing off when she saw my death stare. I admit, I was more pissed at the fact that her charred whatever woke me up from my dream. I wished I heard everything my father had to say, but unfortunately, I got woken up abruptly.

Right when I scanned my boarding pass and stepped through the gate, he called out, "Lucille, is there really no chance for us?" I did not stop walking. That was the clearest answer I could give him. The flight from Ember City to Cascade City flew by, just three hours. I had never been to Cascade City before. It was chillier than I expected. I checked into the cozy B&B I had booked instead of some fancy hotel. I wanted to feel the pulse of the place.

Leo asked. I thought about the fire that had broken through my binding, the ancient fury that had opened its eyes inside me and refused to be extinguished. I thought about Marcus, out there somewhere, still burning with whatever twisted rage drove him, and about how different that kind of fire was from what I wanted to build here. "Ember House," I said slowly, testing the words. "Because an ember isn't the destructive part of a fire. It's what's left after everything burns down — small, but still warm. Still alive. Still capable of starting something new if you're patient with it."